Perspective taking during reading: An on-line investigation of the illusory transparency of intention

Although proficient readers must be reasonably successful at keeping track of what information they share with characters and what information is privileged to them, there is evidence that they are unable to do so with complete accuracy. Keysar (1994) used off-line tasks to demonstrate that readers sometimes mistakenly use privileged information when evaluating a character’s interpretation of an ambiguous message. After we replicated Keysar’s (1994) findings (Experiment 1), the results of an on-line task indicated that this “illusory transparency of intention” extends to natural reading (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, we provided preliminary support for the hypothesis that readers’ accuracy in assessing a given character’s perspective is influenced by whether or not that character is in the focus of the story. The results are discussed with regard to two competing theoretical views: the construal view and the standard view.